Call Center Solutions Featured Article

Technology and voice user interface design innovation "are transforming outbound IVR applications from the pain of stilted DTMF to proactive outreach with speech dialogs that are actually appreciated by prospects and customers."

So say officials of VoltDelta (News - Alert), adding that reminders, offers and alerts "are not only generated from hosted platforms cost effectively, but systems can now take advantage of far more engaging interactions to make the predictive dialer 'press or say' model of automated outreach a relic of the past."

Sounds good to this reporter. Let's face it, as much money as it saves for companies using it, IVR is far too infrequently a good experience for the customer. There is a way to do it well, however. As VoltDelta officials say, "When combined with easy to use self-configuration tools, automated outbound IVR tools are enabling a channel of communication for customer satisfaction and retention benefits."

As they explain it, capable on demand outbound IVR minimizes technology configurations without requirements for capital investment for quick results. "A robust on demand outbound IVR solution with a wide range of applications can be used for many purposes," as well -- "for example, one bank customer of VoltDelta (News - Alert) is using its DeltaCast outbound IVR to notify customers of inactivity which helps them to comply with new banking regulations. The easy Web configuration did not require that IT become involved in the campaign set-up or management."

This bank, VoltDelta officials note approvingly, also combines outbound IVR welcome calls to new customers with conversion to inbound call routing to best agent. And others are using this approach: "Similar to this bank, many organizations use outbound IVR as part of a broader customer care strategy that encompasses many channels of communication."

In short, as VoltDelta officials say, delivering multi-channel support does not need to mean silos of communication. Robust outbound IVR systems should include tight integration between key components of a call center such as, agent systems, voice self service and SMS messaging.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.